


This little scar

by kate_the_reader



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Guns, M/M, Scars, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 22:33:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11860989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kate_the_reader/pseuds/kate_the_reader
Summary: The discovery of a little scar leads to revelations about both their pasts.





	This little scar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brookebond](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brookebond/gifts).



> _Brookebond’s prompt was: Eames notices Arthur once had a pierced ear_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> I'm, again, grateful to oceaxe for beta'ing this for me.

Eames first notices it when he kisses his way up Arthur’s lovely neck, along his jaw, all the way to the tender spot just behind his ear. He sucks on the lobe itself and then tips his face back to see properly.

“What’s this, darling?”

Arthur is almost boneless in his lap, tilting his head to give Eames access and just about purring with pleasure. “What’s what?”

“This.” He takes Arthur’s earlobe between his thumb and forefinger, feeling the tiny divot there. “A piercing?”

“Yeah.”

Arthur rubs his face on Eames’ shoulder, clearly asking for more kisses, and equally clearly disinclined to say more.

Eames has always known that Arthur doesn’t easily talk about himself. How could he not know, when years of wooing had not yielded much personal information at all. It’s different now. Now that he gets to lie in the dark with Arthur and listen to him. To talk while making dinner, while driving somewhere. To listen and talk. But even now, Arthur doesn’t part with his secrets easily. Eames has to draw them out carefully, probing gently, offering confidences in trade. Knowing when to stop.

He goes back to his careful exploration of Arthur’s skin and lets the puzzle of the piercing drop. Arthur may tell him more sometime. When he’s ready. Eames can afford to wait. That thought hits him with renewed force every time it occurs. He can afford to be patient with Arthur, because Arthur is apparently here to stay.

He’s here to stay, and to allow Eames to discover him, to uncover his hidden parts, to unwrap him and study him. It turns out that Arthur positively loves being unwrapped. Loves being carefully undressed — divested of his suit jacket, his waistcoat, his tie, his shirt, his undershirt, his shoes, his socks, his trousers, his pants. Just thinking about the process makes Eames a little light-headed.

And when Eames has him naked, stretched across the bed, he’s like a languid cat, arching his neck, his back, flexing his hips, giving Eames total access to his body and all the secrets written there.

Eames has to pace himself, because this freedom of access is too heady to be exercised all at once. He chooses a small area and focuses on it utterly, examining every bump and blemish. The knobs of Arthur’s spine, the moles and freckles that dust his collarbones and his shoulders. The scars. 

The scars. The healed-over reminders of life. An appendix removed, a bone set with a metal rod. A fall from a tree, a fight with a knife. Eames was there to see some of them happen, others are part of the history of Arthur.

Like this tiny hole. This little scar of an earlier Arthur.

Arthur loves hiding his secrets under his careful layers almost as much as he loves being unwrapped. He dresses slowly and carefully, looking straight at Eames as he covers up more and more of himself, as if saying, this is mine, to show to whom I choose, to hide from whom I choose.

The thought that he’s the one to whom all is revealed takes Eames’ breath away.

 

A couple of days after he discovered the tiny hole, Eames comes upon Arthur reading on the sofa, his fingers playing idly with his earlobe, unconsciously (or more likely consciously, Arthur does very little unconsciously) drawing attention to the long-gone piercing. 

Eames sits down, but doesn’t say anything. Arthur sighs and leans against him, his head tilted onto Eames’ shoulder. Eames slips his arm round Arthur and brings his hand up to his neck, bared for him. Arthur’s wearing a t-shirt, there’s nothing to impede him as he runs his fingers from collar bone to jaw to the secret space behind his ear, to the spot Arthur has just been touching. 

“I did it myself. With a needle and a candle and an ice cube.” He shudders slightly. “It takes a surprising amount of force to push a needle through your own ear. And an ice cube isn’t an effective anaesthetic.” He laughs, briefly. Eames waits.

“I was just a kid.”

“Of course.”

“Just a dumb kid.”

“Yeah, well. When do you think I got that crappy anchor?”

Arthur stretches across Eames and pushes up his shirt sleeve, rubs his thumb over the faded, blurry anchor on his right arm. He stays like that, draped over Eames, but he doesn't say any more about needles.

In the dark, later, Eames says, quietly: “Could I see that kid?”

“Hmm,” Arthur hums, drowsy. “Maybe.”

Eames finds his thoughts returning to that kid often. Was he a cocky lad, proudly flaunting his difference? Dancing in clubs, the earring catching the light as he caught the eye? Was it a stud, or a ring? 

 

About a week later, Eames finds an old photograph on his pillow. It’s faded and creased, one corner torn off. It was taken in a club or at a party, it seems. A slender boy sprawls on a sofa, dark hair curling almost to his narrow shoulders. Glinting in his ear is a small golden ring. His eyes are hooded, his mouth sulky. 

Eames sits on the bed and studies it for a long time. Arthur’s well-known, well-loved face. With a subtly different Arthur behind his eyes.

He traces his fingers lightly over the contours of Arthur’s face in the picture. Finally, he sets it on his nightstand, propped against the lamp.

As they get ready for bed later, Arthur glances at the picture and grimaces slightly.

“Thank you for letting me see,” says Eames. 

Arthur picks up the picture, but then he seems to change his mind and puts it back, face down. “You can keep it, if you want,” he says.

Eames does want, but he knows better now than to leave it where Arthur has to see it. He puts it in the drawer. It’s not as if that long-ago boy is more interesting than the Arthur who is here now, able and sometimes willing to share his secrets, but Eames does wonder and want to know more about him, how he formed the now-Arthur. He takes the picture out occasionally and looks at it. Those dark hidden eyes, that dissatisfied mouth.

 

“Do you want to know why I did it?” Arthur says one day as they’re driving up the coast, Eames at the wheel, Arthur leaning slightly against the passenger side door, turned a bit towards Eames, one foot on the seat, his long fingers rubbing at the hinge of his jaw and the lobe of his ear. 

Eames glances at him. He can’t take his eyes off the road for more than a few seconds. “If you want to tell.”

“I mean, it’s lame. I did it for the same reason everyone does.” He laughs. “Rebellion.” He frames the word in ironic voice-quotes. “I was so desperate to be different. I thought an earring was making this big announcement.” He falls silent and Eames glances at him again. His eyes have gone unfocused as he looks backwards. Eames doesn’t say anything, but he reaches across the gear lever to touch Arthur. His ankle is all he can reach, so he curls his hand round that.

“Of course he noticed,” Arthur says. “‘Take that hippie thing out of your ear,’ he said. He noticed, but he didn’t understand.” 

“Your dad?” says Eames, to keep Arthur talking, because who else could it be?

“Yeah.” Arthur sounds tired of remembering. “My father. ‘Take that hippie thing out. Cut your hair. Join the Army.’ Well, he won. Eventually.” He straightens in his seat, lifting Eames’ hand from his ankle, putting his foot back on the floor. He keeps hold of Eames’ hand for a moment. “He wasn’t the only man who noticed though. So it wasn’t a complete … waste.”

“The picture?” says Eames.

“College. I didn’t socialise exclusively on campus, shall we say.”

The sprawling pose, the hooded come-hither look, the pouting mouth. The dim club lighting. The picture had confirmed some of his imaginings, but the reality it showed was possibly less happy than he’d hoped. His heart clenches for the angry young man in the picture, looking for the love he wasn’t getting at home; attracting the attention of other father figures.

They arrive at their destination then and Arthur’s confessional mood is gone, for now. 

 

Eames is so grateful for Arthur’s confidences. And he’s ashamed that he has not shared as much. He gives the impression of being forthcoming because he speaks easily about all manner of things — ideas, even feelings — and he has sometimes wondered why no one seems to realise how little he tells of himself. 

It's part of why he can perform the forger’s illusion. He’s a sponge, and a mirror. He notices, and absorbs, and he can give what people what they want to see. What they think they want. 

Doing it to Arthur is a terrible trick, though; carefully drawing him out, and giving too little in return — an old, old habit. But self-protection is a hard habit to break, when you’ve been doing it since schooldays. He wishes he were less good at it. He wishes Arthur would call him out on it. Arthur has been hurt in the past by trusting — trusting Dom, trusting Mal, trusting his superior officers. Trusting men he met in clubs, when he was a slender boy? 

He is just going to have to give Arthur a whole piece of himself. Unasked for, an unexpected gift, and hope he accepts it, accepts the Eames it will reveal, the less-than-truthful Eames who will be left unprotected.

But when to offer Arthur a gift that may hurt him? He roils with nerves, tries to hide it with everyday things, applies his focus to Arthur with renewed dedication. Or tries to. 

Arthur may have been taken in by Eames’ deceptions, but he notices the change in him.

“You’re restless,” he says one evening. “What can I do?”

This is a moment of truth. Is Eames brave enough to take it?

“I am, darling,” he says. He stops, to see if Arthur will step in, but Arthur waits for him. “I am. Because you’ve been so open with me, and I don’t think I’ve been fair.” Now Arthur seems on the point of saying something, but Eames hurries on: “I’ve winkled secrets out of you, while keeping my own.”

“ _Winkled_? You didn’t force me to tell, Eames. You asked and I told, eventually. I’m glad I did.”

“So am I. But did I offer you anything in return?”

“What do you mean, Eames?”

“I haven’t told you all I could … as much as I should.”

“Maybe I haven’t asked enough. I’ve been selfish too.”

“Selfish?”

“Maybe I’ve preferred to live in the now and not know about the past,” says Arthur. “Do you want me to ask now? Would it be easier?”

It would, in a way, but Eames also feels terrible, forcing Arthur to drag out of him something he’s decided to give him anyway. On the other hand, Arthur has let him ask, and he has answered, not just chosen what to give.

“Okay,” he says. “Ask me anything.”

“Alright,” says Arthur. “Will you tell me about this?” He pulls Eames’ shirt out of his trousers and pushes it up, so he can put his hand on a scar on his side. He traces it with his elegant fingers, trailing them across it. It’s an angry raised line. “I can’t believe I’ve never asked you about this before,” he says.

Arthur has touched on a painful memory. 

“Okay. I think I understand why you joined up. I don’t know if I’ve told you why I did?”

“Not really.”

“You know I was sent to a posh boarding school? I was supposed to go to Cambridge, follow in his footsteps, join the Foreign Office. ‘Our man in Africa’, all that.”

Arthur smiles at that, little wryly.

“Yes, well, I got there eventually. Not like he expected though. His sort thinks the Army is a fine career, if you go to Sandhurst. But only the ‘lower orders’ join the ranks, you know. So I joined the ranks. Took my A levels and went to a recruiting office. Became a squaddie. And I liked it. But, fuck, it was tough! You know that, I’m sure.”

Arthur nods. “Yeah.”

Eames touches the scar. “This is from then. Stupid training accident. I mean, we didn’t have a war to go to at the time, but the Army can injure you even without an enemy to do it. Took months to recover, after they dug the bullet out. By which time my whole squad had moved on. And they took another look at my A-levels and decided they had a better use for me. In the thinking department, rather than the getting-shot-at division. That wasn’t the reason why I joined in the first place, just to end up where he thought I ‘belonged’. Pushing papers around, giving orders.” 

“Better than only taking them,” says Arthur, with feeling.

Eames hasn’t been looking at Arthur, but now he does. Arthur is scowling at his own memory. “But I get what you’re saying, Eames. So what happened?”

“I declined officer training. Another thing came up that they thought might be suitable. And here we are.”

“Here we are. Thank god.” Arthur touches the scar again, slipping his hand back up under Eames’ shirt. “Bit more dramatic than mine,” he says. “Thank you for telling me.”

 

They’re lying in bed several days later when Arthur returns to the scar. He’s got his head one Eames’ chest, and his fingers once again trace the angry raised line.

“Will you tell me exactly how you got this?”

Eames places his hand over Arthur’s, feels the line himself. He doesn’t really want to revisit it, but he has to give this to Arthur without reservation.

“Live fire training. Went a bit wrong. My fault.”

Arthur lifts his head from Eames’ chest, leans back so he can look at him, but he doesn’t interrupt, so Eames has to press on.

“I was in the wrong place. I got shot.” His terror in that moment rises back up. “Christ, darling, I thought I was going to die. So did everyone, apparently. For a while.”

“God, Eames.”

“Yeah. And then when I finally recovered, I’d been left behind and they stuck me in with a different group. I’d lost my nerve, though.”

The shame of his first time back at the shooting range has never really faded. The terror that paralysed him. “I couldn’t shoot, Arthur.”

“But you got through it. You can shoot now.”

“In dreams.” He closes his eyes to escape Arthur’s concern. “Because that was the next option. You know, right at the beginning, when it was just for training.”

“Me too. I mean, that’s how I got in, as well.”

“When I told you the other day, I put it backwards. They offered me officer training after dreamshare. Because I was good at _that_. If not at real soldiering. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t be an officer who can’t even go on a real shooting range.”

He doesn’t want to say more. Arthur seems to understand, because he doesn’t press him further.

 

Except he does return to the subject, a few days later. They’re in the car; it’s a good place to talk. “Would you like to get past the shooting thing?” he says, without preamble.

Eames glances over at him. “I’m not sure there’s any need.”

“Probably not. But you could. If you wanted to. I could … help. If you want.”

Eames doesn’t know if he does want that. But it would be stupid and mean to reject it out of hand. “I’ll think about it.”

“Okay.”

Arthur doesn’t say any more, but Eames can’t stop thinking about it. It’s silly to be able to not only shoot in dreams, but to hold his own in a firefight, and to think that would be impossible in real life. Even if he never has the need up top. And letting Arthur help would be a good thing, probably.

 

“So,” he says, some days later, in bed, where it is always easiest to talk. “Shooting.”

“Yes?”

“Let’s do it.”

Arthur turns his head on the pillow. “Okay.”

“Thank you.” He’s not sure why he feels so nervous. It’s only doing something with Arthur that they’ve done in far more stressful dream situations.

Arthur reaches for his hand. “Sure, Eames.”

Eames has never owned a handgun, but he knows Arthur has one, kept in a safe in the closet in the bedroom. The next day, he gets it out and cleans it, disassembling it on the coffee table.

“I booked us time at a range,” he says, matter of fact. “This afternoon.”

Eames laughs, nervous. “Alright. No time like the present, I suppose.”

“No. It’ll be okay, Eames, I think. And if it isn’t, we can try again. Or not.”

Arthur drives them to the range. “They know me here,” he says as he parks in the small gravel lot.

“Hey, Arthur,” says the guy behind the desk, “Haven’t seen you in a while. How’s it going?”

“Great, Pete. Yes, been a while. This is Eames.”

“Hey Eames.” Pete leans over the desk to shake his hand. “Not your first time?”

“No.”

They are given ear protectors and led through into the range. There are a few other people there, but no one takes much notice of them.

“How do you want to do this?” says Arthur. “Just do it?”

He has to smile a bit at the cliched slogan. “Yeah. Right. May as well.”

Arthur hands him the gun. The weight is familiar in his hand, at least. Arthur takes out a box of ammunition, fills the magazine and hands it to Eames. It slots home with a familiar click, even though dream weapons are always loaded. So far, so good. Maybe enough time has passed, enough gunfights in dreams. Still, his stomach heaves a bit as he raises the weapon and sights at the target. Arthur steps back, out of his way.

He knows how to fire a handgun. He just hasn’t done it while conscious for a long time. He settles his weight evenly and squeezes the trigger. The report is loud, even with the ear protection, and the recoil is worse than in a dream, but it’s not as bad as he recalls from the Army range all those years ago. And maybe Arthur’s calm presence is what makes this time different. His certainty that Eames can do this, because he’s seen him do it. Before he can lose his nerve, he fires another three rounds, sighting quickly, and then lowers the firearm. His breath feels a little ragged.

Arthur steps forward and peers down the range at the target. “Looks good,” he says. “Do you want to check?” He presses the button to bring the target forward. There’s a wayward shot, but the other three aren’t bad. 

“How are you?” says Arthur. “Okay?” Eames nods. “Want to go again?”

He may as well. Eames isn’t sure he’ll ever really like shooting in reality again, but it is good to feel he’s getting over what was stopping him.

Arthur sends the target back out and steps away again. Eames raises the gun and sights, squeezes off another six rounds, grouped in pairs, double-tap. He likes the feeling of competence. And relief. When Arthur pulls the target in for another look, the shots are well grouped. 

Arthur smiles at him. “I had an idea you’d be okay. Want to go again?”

But Eames has had enough, for now at least. “No. You go. I’ll watch.” He hands Arthur his firearm and steps back. Arthur reloads, puts a fresh sheet in the target holder and pushes it out, further than for Eames, raises the gun, sights carefully and fires nine shots, in groups of three. Eames is a bit surprised by the feeling of almost-envy that rises up. He pushes it down and admires Arthur’s stance, the way his long fingers look gripping the gun, the firm flex of his shoulders. 

Arthur pulls the target in again. There is one big hole in the centre, and a smaller one in the head. He nods, unsmiling, and steps back, clicking the clip free and taking the remaining rounds out. He steps closer to Eames and slips a finger through a belt loop. “Okay?” he says.

“Yes.”

“Want to go?”

It was fine, and Eames is glad they did it, but he does want to go. “Thanks.”

In bed that night, lying with his head on Arthur’s shoulder, he touches his earlobe, that tiny divot that started all this off. He has more secrets to tell and he’s sure Arthur does as well. There’s plenty of time for all of them.


End file.
